Three simple things could get you to first
base – if that’s really where you want to be. Sometimes, I’m not so sure.

At my company Talking Brand, we’re
recruiting for a Digital
Marketing Manager (so if you know of someone great, do let them know).

And, as anyone who’s done it can attest,
recruiting can be a joyless, time consuming task…and it can also have you
shaking your head in wonder. Before I comment on three things applicants
routinely overlook, let me just say this: we’re recruiting for a marketer for
goodness’ sake. A marketer involves a special set of skills.

Among other things, they need to know how
to find out about a target market (research, reasoning); about how to position
an offer to deliver what that target wants (deductive reasoning,
communication); and use the right channels to get the offer and product to the
market.

Given that it’s a digital marketing role,
they also need to know a whole lot of other things as well of course, but those
three marketing basics are, well, basic. Which is why I wonder of people are
really serious, when they do things like this:

1.
Send a resume without a cover
letter

What signals ‘I
don’t care’ faster than a resume without a cover letter? In my book, nothing.

Here’s the
thing: No cover letter, no reading of the resume. No cover letter, no
opportunity to set yourself apart in terms of why you want the job or why you
should be interviewed.

Not sending a
cover letter also suggests two other things, aside from indifference. (Or
stupidity.) That you think your experience is so shit-hot that it speaks
‘volumes’ and, that as a person, you’re only as much as what you’ve done. Neither
of those can ever be true.

That’s because
we don’t just employ people for their functional competencies; we also employ
them for their motivational fit – and that’s all about who they are as people.
In addition – and this is important – how can you actually even be a good
marketer for me, when in a situation where you have to market yourself, you
can’t even do something as basic as use the right channels to get your offer to
the market?

2. Address a cover letter with a generic name

Great. You
actually wrote a cover letter. You get 10 points. Oops, it says: To whom it may
concern, or something else equally generic. When there’s a name on the job ad,
use it. Nothing signals ‘generic’ and ‘I don’t read’ faster

than a cover letter
with a generic address.

Ok, so you
suckered me into reading it and giving you 10 points; but sorry, I now just
took them away again because you couldn’t be arsed writing to me. Personally.
No effort, no reward.

And in case you
think that I think a job is something bestowed on a grateful recipient; think
again. I know it’s a two-way exchange. But it must begin with some effort on
both sides. As an employer I go to the effort of crafting a job that I think
explains what it would be like and the kind of person we think would thrive.
Your job, is to respond in kind.

3. Fron up to an interview without having been on your website

You must have
done a couple of things well, because now you’re here at an interview. I did a
few this week and here’s what I noticed. There were two applicants who had
downloaded at least two reports each. One seemed like they’d read them. Another
had downloaded something else that didn’t need an email address and with all
three I could tell that they’d looked at other pages on the site.

But not for
long. (I can see from our dashboard exactly what pages each of those three
people went to and for how long. Not a helluva lot for people contemplating
moving to a new workplace.)

As for the
others interviewed – if they visited the site they certainly only did so anonymously
and given that we have at least three special reports on our site, I thought it
interesting that they didn’t look at one.

But here’s the
other reason I know that they didn’t do that much research. They had bugger-all
questions. Now I know that as a marketer, asking questions is one of the things
I need to do best in life. It goes hand in hand with the marketer’s
curious-gene.

In contrast, I wonder if they know how much
research I do on them? If they’ve got a decent cover letter and resume, they
may end up in my short pile. The recruiter will typically phone screen these
and while she does that, I google all of them to see what social media/web
profile they may have. I go to their LinkedIN page. I check if they’re on
Twitter and if so what kind of posts they’re doing. Later, if we’re getting
serious I may check up and see if I can find them on Facebook – purely to see
of they sound like the kind of person we want to have around 5 days a week.

Then, for the interview, I have a list of
generic questions, but I also have some that are related to their specific
experience. I have a couple of members of my team take them for coffee to get a
better sense of them and so the candidate can also get a feel for us. Finally,
if we’re happy with them and wish to proceed, I may set them an exam. When it
comes to referee checking, I make a series of other specific questions I want
drilled into by the recruiter.

That’s my research as an employer. How
good’s yours as a prospective employee?

By the way: this is NOT a blog post that
should encourage agencies to contact me.